Angelus News | March 22, 2024 | Vol. 9 No. 6

Greg Erlandson is the former president and
editor-in-chief of Catholic News Service.
to crush them. We apply labels like
MAGA, Communist, and even vermin,
all ways to degrade and dehumanize.
Wessman and others have reported
that Catholics increasingly identify
more with their party than their
Church. In fact, religious belief is less
and less seen as a source of guidance.
Fewer Christians are going to church
regularly or reading Scripture.
The question Wessman asks is this:
“Does my relationship with Jesus, and
the tradition given to me through the
Scriptures, along with the teachings of
the Church, inform my life more than
the political party to which I belong?”
The fact that many Americans today
would be more bothered if their child
married someone from the opposite
political party than a different church
may tell us the answer.
For Wessman, our challenge as
Catholics is to rediscover the person on
the other side of the divide. Because
we are called to love our enemy, not
to mention our fellow citizens and our
fellow parishioners, the solution is not
war, nor avoidance, but to “cross over,”
to engage “the other.”
“When one chooses to encounter
the other, the likelihood of seeing the
person who espouses the idea, and not
just the idea that one disagrees with,
becomes more likely,” Wessman writes.
“For Christians, crossing over is not
really an option: It is essential to a life
of missionary discipleship,” he adds.
This is hard stuff. It can end badly,
both because the “other side” may
not respond well to our efforts, and
because our own “side” may not either.
Our faith does call us at this time to be
“strangers in a strange land.”
But when I think of my Jewish friend,
I realize that two essential ingredients
are trust and time. Getting to know
each other in small conversations and
big, over meals or shared projects, the
person becomes more essential than
the position.
All those books about polarization
give me hope. Organizations that are
working to connect us one by one do
as well. This fever of mutual fear and
loathing will surely break. But that
calm after the storm can only happen
when we make the first move.
March 22, 2024 • ANGELUS • 27